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repaid. The demand for this superior means of self-culture and professional literature is not what we have a right to expect. We can scarcely complain if we are underrated by the world when we so manifestly underrate ourselves. During the thirty-five years of our existence as an association, we are for the first time to-day to attempt a formal commemorative discourse of an American teacher. These years cover an important period, not only of our educational, but of our civil history. This association came into existence at a crisis in the progress of our schools, and in the midst of the most important educational controversy that has occured in the State. The labors of these years, the lectures, the debates, the conferences, formal and informal, at our annual meetings, have had a great influence on the schools of the State. These influences, it is true, cannot be accurately measured or expressed in tables of statistics. Like sunshine and shower, they have vitalized and fertilized our schools from the primary school to the university. There is not a college in the State to-day whose numbers are not larger, whose scholarship is not higher, and whose moral condition is not purer, from the influences that have gone out from this body.

Is it not time for us to begin a review of these years and place the results of these labors in a more tangible form for those who shall come after us? There are facts and dates, and names, and relations of cause and effect and beginnings and conclusions in the memories of members now present, for which the historian of the next century will sigh and toil in vain. We have been diligently and honorably employed in making history; is it not time to do something by way of recording it. The individual and the associated lives of the founders of this organization and of their successors will shape materially the life of this Commonwealth in the coming generations.

At the convention of public school teachers in Worcester, in November, 1845, which resulted in the formation of this association, there are some present who can well remember a young man of fine person and modest mien, who had come to claim his share in the benefits of this new movement and, if need be, to do his part of the work. He had just completed a course of academical and professional study under the best teachers that New England afforded, and then found himself at the head of one of our oldest academies. With a well-trained mind and a heart all aglow with the noblest aspirations, he enlisted in the ranks of the associated teachers of

the State, and for thirty-three years was ready for any service or sacrifice. It is of this life and character that I am to attempt an analysis.

Charles Hammond, to whom I refer, was born in Union, Conn., June 15, 1813. He was the son of Shubael Hammond, who for fifty years was the physician of the town. The story of his early life is like that of hundreds and thousands in New England who have attained to usefulness and distinction. The eldest of six

children, his kindness of heart and quickness of intellect, his love of study and his indifference to play, seemed to mark him for a different life from that of the farm or the workshop. But the physician of seventy years ago, as he rode in saddle or sulky, in storm and sunshine, in heat and cold, through mud and dust, by night and by day, received no three or five dollar fees for prescriptions and medicine. The expense of a collegiate education on the basis of his small income seemed to Dr. Hammond more than prudence or honesty would justify; and he accordingly felt obliged, though with great reluctance, to advise his son to make the most of the district school, and of the private high school which frequently flourished in the New England towns during the autumn months, and not attempt a more extended and expensive course. But the prudence of the father was overborne by the partiality of friends and neighbors, a mother's affection, a sister's pride, and a sister's love; sacrifices were made, new means devised, new toils were welcomed and the task undertaken. At the age of seventeen he taught successfully a district school in Willington, Conn., and the next summer began the more direct preparation for college at Monson Academy.

We have thus early reached the period in Mr. Hammond's life which may be considered decisive of his destiny. We have reached the spot where he is to pass the happiest years of his life, the spot to which his early affections were to be formed and fastened, where he is first to slake "the thirst that from the soul doth spring" with the divine drafts of knowledge; the spot whence he is to advance to the higher walks of learning, to which his fond alma mater will recall him, again and again, to impart to others the culture and the learning which she has given him; the spot where when his work is done, his body will be laid with reverent affection to mingle with its native dust.

But we must pause here a moment or two to recall the academy

of fifty years ago, its studies, its surroundings, the moral and religious forces which centered in it. The academy of fifty years ago! to most of you the phrase is cold and meaningless; but to some it is like a blast of the archangel's trump, and will compel all the burial places of the memory to give up their dead. To most of you it is an antiquated building, with half-monastic tenants, austere lives, and aching hearts. To a few, at least, it is a reminder of life's purest joys, best friendships, and holiest aspirations. To the youngest here, it is a mere tradition, an idle tale. To some of the older members of the profession it is a spell with which to restore a past, brighter in its simplicity than all the magnificence of the present or anything that lies hidden behind the veil of the future.

You must imagine then, or remember, as your case may require a modest building of wood, seldom of brick, with a school-room or two, a hall for declamation and exhibition, a closet for a few books, perhaps a pair of globes and a surveyor's compass, a small cupola containing a bell to tell the hours of nine and one or two. The grounds are nearly in the condition in which nature left them, with an oak or an elm for shade, and a few Lombardy poplars for ornament. You may place this building in the peaceful retirement of a country village, where the scream of the locomotive has never been

"heard the nymphs to daunt,

Or fright them from their hallowed haunt;"

where neighbors loved each other, and lived neighborly lives, with now and then a quarrel for variety's sake; shared each other's joys and sorrows, prosperities and adversities; where no sound broke the stillness of the Sabbath morning but the meeting-house bell, calling the villagers to devout worship, not to a display of fashion.

village or its immediate suburbs you would most likely find a Revolutionary soldier,1 or two, who would gather to their firesides or to

1 Lexington academy stood (and still stands under the name of the Hancock Congregational Meeting-house) just at the corner of the ever-memorable Green, where was "first heard the dismal voice of the alarm bell and the sharp, angry hiss of the death volleys, from the British lines." And there, not six miles farther on, if any faith can be placed in any fact pertaining to our Revolution .."the embattled farmers stood

And fired the shot heard round the world."

On that Green, under the shadows of the meeting-house and monument, the academy boys found a most delightful play-ground, and there for a generation they played ball in healthy sport, where Pitcairn and Parker had played ball in such deadly earnest. The houses around bore then, and still bear, the marks

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the sheltering shade from the summer sun, the young academics, and tell the stories of Lexington and Bunker Hill, of Valley Forge, of Saratoga and Yorktown. The history of the Revolution and the traditions of the "old French and other colonial wars were taught with less method perhaps, but with more fervor than the best of us now teach them. On these premises you are to place, first, a preceptor, generally a first-class scholar, of superior character, the product of one of the best New England homes, and a graduate of a New England college. With him is associated a preceptress, and sometimes a third teacher, when the number of pupils required one. To these teachers you must give fifty or a hundred scholars, and of that shock which severed the colonies from the British throne. Members of Captain Parker's company were still alive. Seven of them sat beside Edward Everett when he pronounced his oration on the 19th of April, 1835, and the bones of their comrades were taken from their nameless grave and placed under the monument on the spot where they fell. One of these veterans, Daniel Mason, was quite a favorite in his last years. He lived in honorable poverty, and his humble cottage was the resort of the young and old, the rich and the poor, and the scholars of the academy among the rest.

It was in this same academy building that the first normal school in America was opened. Here taught Cyrus Pierce and Samuel J. May, names that will not soon be forgotten. And here, at an earlier period, taught Caleb Stetson, Thomas Sherwin, Samuel Stetson, and Timothy P. Ropes.

Groton also had its full share of Revolutionary heroes. One of these is pleasantly described by the Rev. Dr. William Allen, formerly president of Bowdoin College, in a letter to the Groton Jubilee, 1854. Dr. Allen taught school in Groton in 1802. He says: "There were then living those who had done good service for their country in the War of Independence and before. I feel bound to mention one or two. Major Moors was an adjutant in the army at the capture of Burgoyne. He assisted the Hessians to emigrate from Saratoga to Cambridge. I was one evening invited to the bountiful table of a neighbor, Mr. Jonathan Farwell, who had as much humor joined to as much sense as is seldom found in his condition of life. He was usually called 'Uncle Jock.' At his house I went into his father's room to see the old gentleman, then nearly eighty years old. He was a small man, but energetic and animated. Although his feet were just in the grave he was full of spirit as ever. He fought his battles over again. He told me that in 1745, when twenty-one years old, he was at the capture of Louisburg. Just thirty years after that event he was in the battle of Bunker Hill, and was shot through the body. He was a man of as much spirit and energy as I ever knew; and he had a proper reverence for law and good government. He related to me that in the time of Shays's Rebellion the question was, 'Shall Jock go out and fight them?' I said, yes! I would disinherit a son of mine who would not fight for his country. Had I as much blood as would bear a seventy-four gun-ship over Grand Monadnock, I would spill it all in fighting those rebels!"

Such were the soldiers and patriots who then dwelt in all the towns of New England, the remnants of the war,- noble men, with souls too elevated to be drawn away from law and order, from truth, justice, freedom, honor, by the seducing hopes of office.

these are to be gathered mainly from the twenty or thirty surrounding towns. There is, however, no sectionalism in these academies. From east and west, from north and south, from the islands of the

sea,

From Greenland's icy mountains,

From India's coral strand,
Where Afric's sunny fountains
Roll down their golden sand,
From many an ancient river,
From many a palmy plain,

from the oldest abodes of civilization, "the olive grove of academe Plato's retirement," young pilgrims repaired to these schools to relume by their Promethean heat the light which had gone out upon the ancient altars. The most learned native Greek now living on this continent was a graduate of Monson in 1829, and there in later years, as we shall have occasion to notice, disciples of Confucius first learned the elements of western civilization and returned with them to their native land. Two members of the present Chinese embassy at Washington are graduates of Monson. The academic year was divided generally into four quarters, corresponding with the seasons of the year. The openings of these "quarters," or terms," were busy seasons. The stage coaches

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are heavily laden with youthful and joyous passengers, and along the highways and byways leading to the academic village may be seen the open or covered wagon, the carryall, and the family chaise containing the sons or the daughters, the brothers or the sisters who have won their laurels at the district schools, and are now gathering at these little Olympias to measure their moral and mental strength with those who have gained like distinction in other and similar fields. I must not omit to mention another class; those who have no horse nor carriage, and cannot afford the stage fare, but who must have an education. These you may see footing it along the roads with a few books in hand; the trunk has preceded or will follow them upon one of the slow-moving teams. I need not dwell upon the busy scenes in the preceptor's rooms, the numberless questions and discussions in regard to studies, board, companions, tuition, etc., etc., nor need I refer to the tear that moistens the parent's eye as he bids farewell and commits to stranger hands a dutiful and gifted child.

1 Professor Sophocles, - University Professor of Ancient, Byzantine, and Modern Greek in Harvard University.

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